Ag secretary makes bid to oversee climate change efforts

JERRY HAGSTROMVia Plains Cotton Growers, Inc.

Published 7:00 pm, Friday, June 5, 2009

Contending that farmers and foresters can do more than anyone else to reduce global warming, Agriculture Secretary Vilsack is proposing that USDA should run any cap-and-trade system for controlling emissions that cause climate change.

Vilsack's suggestion, first made publicly at a May 27 event in Kentucky, faces a major obstacle, though, since the White House plan for a cap-and-trade system was initially outlined in February in the FY10 budget proposal for the EPA.

Even so, a White House official said Tuesday that no decisions have been made about how a cap-and-trade system should be administered.

"The administration hasn't taken a position on the specifics/where we want any component parts of the program [cap and trade] to be administered," the official said in an e-mail.

Vilsack's statements surfaced in an account of the event written by Al Cross, a formerLouisville Courier-Journal reporter who runs the Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky.

Cross wrote on the Institute's Rural Blog that Vilsack said at a community forum in McAfee, Ky., that he would push Congress to include an agriculture and forestry carbon credits program and a cap-and-trade program under the oversight of USDA.

"We will be advocating forcefully" for both provisions, Vilsack said, according to Cross' account. Vilsack said agriculture emits 7 percent to 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases but could be as much as "25 percent of the solution" through farming practices that prevent carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, Cross reported.

Vilsack also said USDA is better suited than EPA to monitor those practices, since it has more than 2,000 offices, and employees "in virtually every county in the country," according to the report.

USDA did not include Vilsack's comments in its release on the event, which was the fourth in a series of forums at which he is highlighting USDA spending in the economic stimulus package.

On Monday, USDA communications director Chris Mather did not dispute the account, telling Reuters in an e-mail, "Secretary Vilsack believes agriculture and forestry should be included in an offsets program and USDA should play a role to overseeing any such program."

Asked whether Vilsack's comments reflected administration policy, a White House spokesman said: "President Obama has consistently underscored the importance that the agriculture and forestry sectors will play in achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Both the USDA and EPA agree that working together to tackle climate change and implement a system of clean energy incentives is not only good for the environment but will also help grow rural economies."

According to Cross' account, Vilsack also said he agreed with House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson that calculations of the carbon footprint of ethanol should not include "indirect land use," such as the conversion of forest land to agriculture when expansion of corn acreage for ethanol pushes production of other crops elsewhere, including other countries.

That position is not in agreement with a recent finding by EPA, but Vilsack said that EPA's proposal is still "subject to peer review,"

and he is confident that a final rule on the topic will find him and EPA Administrator Jackson in agreement, Cross said.